Ed McMahon - And Me...I'm Ed McMahon (1967)

"Beautiful Girl" by Ed McMahon

After building a comic rapport over five years on the show Who Do You Trust?, it was only natural for Johnny Carson to bring along his friend Ed McMahon to be The Tonight Show's announcer and Johnny's sidekick. McMahon always worked through his big, baritone voice. As a teenager, he started as a carnival barker, bingo caller and pitch man, then switched, after war service and college, to radio and, finally, television where he made for a natural announcer. So, it was probably inevitable that Ed McMahon release an album: And Me...I'm Ed McMahon in 1967 on Cameo Parkway Records.

Although some of the internet lists this album as a 1963 release, the fact that two songs sung by McMahon weren't published until 1966 means 1967 is the actual release date. Rather than the songwriting data, it's the jarring mix of a distorted guitar with big band and dixieland touches on the opening track "Claudia" that really screams late Sixties Pop. The production calms down the genre fusion after this but only to scatter the genres throughout the rest of the record. Whether led by strings, brass or guitar, Ed McMahon still can't find a note. He slides in and out of them, and for having such a rich speaking voice, delivers his lines weakly. At least by the end of the album, McMahon does make some interesting—though not necessarily good—decisions, starting with the storybook epic "Beautiful Girl" and ending with genres he finally shows some affinity for: country ("Loving Heart") and western ("They Call the Wind Maria.") It's not much of a reward for making it to the end of the record, however.

Here is the discography surrounding Ed McMahon's debut album:

And Me...I'm Ed McMahon

Beautiful Girl (1967 single)

"They Call the Wind Maria" by Ed McMahon

"Claudia" by Ed McMahon

Ed McMahon Argues with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show

Ed McMahon Budweiser Commercial

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Johnny Carson - Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair (1964)

After six months finishing out his contract with ABC as host of the daytime game show Who Do You Trust?, Johnny Carson started his historic tenure as the host of The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962. Like the hosts before him, Carson built his career through variety shows and hosting gigs on radio and early television. Despite being a prestige television job, not many comedians wanted the workload The Tonight Show required, even Carson (but he "relented.") Already a rising star, Carson ascended even higher to become one of television's and New York's most familiar faces. As a major star in New York, Carson was a natural choice to help promote the 1964 New York World's Fair. Thus, his debut album was Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair which released in 1964 on Columbia Records.

Part curio and entirely promotional, Johnny Carson weaves together travel tips, comedy bits and an aural tour of popular exhibits for the upcoming World's Fair in New York. The album sounds like a piece of reportage where Carson escorts the listener through New York and then through the Fair making wisecracks during encounters with denizens and funny scenarios one might run into as a tourist. On television, Carson has a knack for making the most scripted and rote material seem off-the-cuff and fresh. He has less success without an audience or a camera to perform to. Carson still maintains his conversational charisma but is too scripted to allow for one of his greatest strengths: making a bad joke go down a little easier. Unfortunately, the album is full of the expected bad jokes that Carson can't do much about or with (about cabbies and panhandlers, parking and traffic, restaurants and tipping) and that's before the minefield of standard racist and misogynistic jokes that comes with a 60's tour of the "world." It's a fascinating album all the same as a capsule of an event and a transformed New York even if the jokes are so common that they would have sounded just as tired promoting the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Note: This album has not yet made its way online.

Here is the discography surrounding Johnny Carson's debut album:

Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair

The Johnny Carson Show (Sep. 1, 1955)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Jan. 14, 1964)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Dec. 31, 1965)

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Merv Griffin - Songs by Merv Griffin (1946)

"Lullaby of the Leaves" by Merv Griffin

By his own account, Jack Paar left Tonight too soon, but the workload of a nightly 105 minutes of screen time was a strain to fill. Even after rerunning "Best-of" material and employing guest hosts to lighten the stress, Paar would make March 30, 1962 his last episode as the host of Tonight. In his five years as host, Paar had made the late night show an institution and set its format for all the hosts who would come after him. When Paar left, NBC had no thought, like there was with Steve Allen's departure, to try something different. Their only thought was to find somebody who could fill Jack Paar's shoes and maintain the show as "must watch" television. In fact, NBC already had the next host signed, but an inflexible ABC wouldn't let him out of his previous contract. So, a series of guest hosts filled the months on the freshly christened The Tonight Show until the new host could be introduced. Famous and familiar faces took turns behind the desk but none was as natural in the chair as Merv Griffin.

NBC executives were so impressed that they gave Merv Griffin his own hour block show to preempt The Tonight Show and keep him around in case Tonight's new host didn't make the grade. Going back in time, Merv Griffin had already been a familiar face with NBC as a game show host, starred in films for Warner Bros., played nightclubs, and started his career as a radio singer at the age of 19. While at KFRC in San Francisco, Merv Griffin saved his money to record a couple singles and the compiling debut album Songs of Merv Griffin released in 1946 on his own, one-off Panda Records.

Despite being a personally funded effort, the "album"—really, it's just four songs—has a professional veneer thanks to his connections at KFRC. Station band leader Lyle Bardo provides his full orchestral support to Merv Griffin's croon. Together, the songs have a cinema quality and a cinematic quality. It's a dreamy sound popular in Hollywood musicals of the 30s and 40s, and Bardo's arrangements paint the scenes of the art songs: a windy day with scattered leaves, waves on the beach. Rather than an artistic statement though, the album is more a calling card for Griffin. He's young, ambitious, an entrepreneur and a professional...who also sings quite well.

Here is the discography surrounding Merv Griffin's debut album:

Lullaby of the Leaves (1946 single)

Sand (1946 single)

Songs by Merv Griffin

"Falling in Love with Love" by Merv Griffin

"Sand" by Merv Griffin

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Regis Philbin - It's Time for Regis! (1968)

"Pennies from Heaven" by Regis Philbin

Concerning these many tour stops covering The Tonight Show (if you hadn't caught on yet,) Regis Philbin is the first to have no background in radio. His first job was in television—circa 1955—as a page for...Tonight and NBC. Regis went on to work as a local news anchor in San Diego for KOGO-TV, where in 1961 he got his first opportunity to host a talk show that was a nationally syndicated, short-lived and poorly reviewed replacement to The Steve Allen Show. After that was when Regis returned to Tonight to fill in as announcer for Hugh Downs. (Much later, he would take over for Hugh Downs again: this time in the Guinness Book of World Records for most time spent on air on network television.) Regis finally broke out becoming a household name in 1967 as the sidekick to Joey Bishop on The Joey Bishop Show. It was on one of these episodes when Regis was gifted the opportunity to sing "Pennies from Heaven" to his idol Bing Crosby. The next day after this impromptu, live television performance, he signed a record deal with Mercury Records leading to his 1968 debut album It's Time for Regis!

Regis sings what he knows and what he knows are songs from the Bing Crosby songbook. Despite the influence of his idol, Regis does not have a crooner's voice. It's higher pitched and better suited for faster tempos. His television experience and sense for the live audience make him less a Crosby impersonator, whose style was honed through the intimacy of radio and film, and more the inheritor of the vaudevillian tradition and performers like Al Jolson (especially audible on Southern-set songs like "Swanee" and "Mame" or Jolson classics like "Toot, Toot, Tootsie!") Throughout the whole album, Regis competes with the album's production. It's not that the production and Regis's voice are at odds (though their wills were,) but that the production is always in danger of outshining him. Helmed by Wrecking Crew veteran Steve Douglas, the album's sound runs on bass and brass and is bulwarked by a choral group; mixing nostalgic musical styles with a popular, buoyant maximalism. (Sometimes these qualities are juxtaposed in jarring ways as when, on "Swanee," a Motown intro suddenly gives way to minstrelsy banjos.) Douglas orchestrates to take the load of musical entertainment that Mercury and Douglas didn't trust Regis to deliver probably because he was untrained and inexperienced or because he wanted to be a crooner singing old popular songs in a time when they were no longer popular in a fashion that wasn't either. Regis actually performs well despite his limitations but he ends up on a record that floats toward the timeless past while being mercilessly pinned to the more dated sounds of 1968.

Nobody bought the record and nobody seemed to like it, including Regis. The negative reaction scared Regis from trying again (at least not for another thirty years,) and he stowed away the album as an embarrassment. But he treasured the experience, that made for a great story and a childhood dream fulfilled then put away.

Here is the discography surrounding Regis Philbin's debut album:

It's Time for Regis!

"Swanee" by Regis Philbin

Regis Philbin Singing to Bing Crosby on The Joey Bishop Show

Regis Philbin on Late Night with David Letterman

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Jack Haskell - Let's Fall in Love (1957)

"Have You Met Miss Jones" by Jack Haskell

When announcer Hugh Downs took time off from Tonight, Jack Haskell was his replacement. A veteran of radio since his college days, Haskell built his career after World War II announcing for television shows. But he was also a singer and first made his name singing for Les Brown and His Orchestra alongside Doris Day. He released his debut album Let's Fall in Love in 1957 on Jubilee Records.

Of the crooners we've covered lately, Haskell proves himself to be most in tune with what jazz vocals really sound like—rather than pop interpretations of standards with light Big Band arrangements. But although Haskell knows how to sing jazz, he's not good at it. It is a daring choice to lay ones voice bare with only guitar and bass for accompaniment, but on these selections of standard love songs, there ends up being no place to hide his faults or highlight his strengths. His blue notes can turn sour. He has limited range and limited dynamics. Alongside the singular tones of the accompaniment, the album makes for a set of songs that do not differentiate themselves. Only on a couple of them does he break out with a belting finale or a faster tempo, while the rest of the songs are left to sit in a boring limbo meant to be romantic but are mostly sleepy. To top it off, Haskell has no feel for the structure of a song. He might be able to phrase but the phrases never build. They might follow a logical musical path, but in performance, the lines blend together and no song seems to find a hook or a climax or a satisfying ending—like listening to a series of run-on sentences.

Here is the discography surrounding Jack Haskell's debut album:

Over the Hillside (1949 single)

Too-Whit! Too-Whoo! (Bring My Loved One to Me) (1949 single)

Ashes of Roses (1950 single with Connie Russell)

Be Anything (But Be Mine) (1952 single)

Goodbye Sweetheart (1952 single with The Heathertones)

Tell It to My Heart (1955 single)

I Remember Mambo (1955 single)

Today's Hits (1955 EP with the José Melis Trio)

Today's Hits (1955 EP with Johnny Guarnieri and His Orchestra)

Today's Hits (1955 EP with Johnny Guarnieri and His Orchestra)

I-M-4-U (I Am for You) (1955 single with Jack Paar)

Theme Songs from Michael Todd's "Around the World in 80 Days" (1957 EP)

I'm Playing Solitaire (1957 single)

Let's Fall in Love

Be Sure, Make No Mistake (1958 single)

The Love Theme from "The Vikings" (My Heart Has Gone to Wander) (1958 single)

Wedding Invitations (1961 single)

"I'm Thru with Love" by Jack Haskell

"I Wish I Were in Love Again" by Jack Haskell

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Hugh Downs - An Evening with Hugh Downs (1959)

"Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" by Hugh Downs

With a new Tonight show host, came a new Tonight show announcer: so with Jack Paar, came Hugh Downs. Hugh Downs was not Tonight's first announcer, but he was the first announcer who released an LP: An Evening with Hugh Downs in 1959 on Epic Records.

Hugh Downs, every six months on Tonight, broke out his guitar to show off his hidden talent as a folksinger. Actual folksinger Burl Ives witnessed one of these performances and was impressed enough to quip that Downs "deserved to wear a beard" like a proper folkie. Hugh Downs wouldn't go that far for folk music, but such praise meant that he could not not cut a record as a result.

But it's one thing to play a song or two every six months and another to string twelve into a sequence. Downs, thus, expands his catalogue of genres from folk to add a spiritual, hymn, cowboy ballad, work and war songs and a sea shanty (a favorite: the short and funny "The Delaware Light.") Due to Downs's limited range and serious style, the tracks all would have sounded like one meandering 30 minute song without the arrangements of Mundell Lowe. Lowe's touches are spare, almost medieval, and focuses Hugh's singing (Hugh Sings!) and the guitar (though I doubt he's the one playing on the record as he is on the cover.) The record is a pleasant surprise: the kind of surprise a hobbyist enjoys enticing when they play for friends at a party or...on a television show to fill time. Surprising, that is, but not memorable enough for the audience to give it much thought in the sixth months between performances.

Note: This is another album that hasn't been digitized but for a couple songs crate diggers have put on the internet.

Here is the discography surrounding Hugh Downs's debut album:

An Evening with Hugh Downs

"The Ride Back from Boot Hill" by Hugh Downs

Jack Paar Walks Off Tonight

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José Melis and His Latin-American Ensemble - Piano Classics – The South American Way (1947)

"Moonlight Sonata" by José Melis and His Latin-American Ensemble

When Jack Paar took over Tonight, he brought on his good friend from USO days José Melis to be the show's musical director. They had worked together, with the same job dynamic, previously on both radio and television. Alongside his career beginnings as a musical director after World War II, Melis recorded instrumental singles with Mercury Records, first packaged together as an album and released in 1947 as Piano Classics – The South American Way. (The album and other contemporary singles were re-released in 1952 as a proper LP rather than just a set of 7"s.)

On the heels of the Good Neighbor Policy and a boom in popular Latin Orchestras in the United States, José Melis mixes his classical training with Latin rhythms (as the album's title implies.) On the six songs that make up the first album's release, the "South American Way" is driven just as much by the continual conga rhythm and bass as by Melis on the piano. It feels like the conga drums often force Melis away from his classical comforts into syncopation and staccato touches. Still, the piano arrangements do their part to make the genre mix work while also showing off Melis's virtuosity.

It's on the later singles (that appear on the re-release) where the piano arrangements take Melis's virtuosity to vaudevillian levels. The piano also takes over for the drums as the crucible for genre mixing, this time adding a sprinkle of jazz to the blend. The jazz, though, is mostly found on the aftertaste of the arrangement, the spare saxophone or guitar, and not from the piano itself—unless you mistake tasteful flourishes for jazz. The recordings as a whole are a fine dish of skill mixed in such a bland way as to not be any flavor in particular. Though, with all those runs, you'd expect there to have been a little more heat.

Here is the discography surrounding José Melis's debut album:

Hungarian Dance No. 6 (1946 single with His Latin-American Ensemble)

Hungarian Rhapsody (1946 single with His Latin-American Ensemble)

Prelude in G Minor (1946 single with His Latin-American Ensemble)

Stardust (1947 single with His Latin-American Ensemble)

Piano Classics – The South American Way

Eli Eli (1947 single)

Cumana (1947 single with His Orchestra)

Don't Call It Love (1947 single with His Orchestra)

Pasion Oriental (1947 single with His Orchestra)

Tamanaco (1951 single)

The Hour of Parting (1952 single)

Piano Classics - The South American Way (1952 album re-release)

Run Away (1954 single)

José Melis Interprets the Classics the South American Way (compilation album with His Latin-American Ensemble)

"Anitra's Dance" by José Melis and His Latin-American Ensemble

"Pasion Oriental" by José Melis and His Orchestra

"Keyboard Kapers" by José Melis and His Latin-American Ensemble

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